Last day of summer vacation

You may have heard that the Republican National Convention is currently happening over in St. Paul. We're doing our level best to avoid it, so we spent the last day of the girls' summer vacation going to the Zoo in the morning and Cascade Bay in the afternoon.

The Zoo was crowded and the animals were mostly hiding away snoozing, but I managed to get a couple of OK shots.

Siesta time for the grizzlies -- at 10 a.m.!
Rough life, dude.


I wouldn't want to mess with those claws.


The snow leopards were only marginally more awake.


I don't think he (she?) liked the humidity.


And like I said, most of the other critters were hidden away asleep, so that was it for pictures.

I didn't bring the camera along to Cascade Bay, but it was a good way to close out the summer. We swam, played water tag and other games, and then the girls found some friends they hadn't seen since school got out last June and promptly ditched us. We were all right about being ditched, though, and retired to our lounge chairs and read -- with periodic breaks to hop in to get cooled off -- while the kids went down the various slides and floated around the lazy river a few dozen last times. For not only was today the last day of summer vacation; it was Cascade Bay's last day of the season. I have to admit that I was a little sad when they blew the whistles at 5 and booted us all out. Dang, this summer went by fast.

But tomorrow we start 4th grade! The girls' Girl Scouts troop, in conjunction with the Boy Scouts troop, is doing the first-day-of-school flag raising ceremony. Great excitement, I tell you, especially since they're now Junior Girl Scouts and have new green vests and insignia that they'll wear for the first time tomorrow. I'd like to think that all the Girl Scouts are this excited about wearing their Girl Scouts' gear for the first day of school (instead of new back-to-school duds) and raising the flag, but I suspect it's just my two quivering with anticipation. Heh.